This is a question I ask myself every day. I look at others my age and younger and wonder how I escaped what they are going through. My energy level is somewhat lower than it used to be and I’m not as strong as I was when I was farming, but I can still perform well. I have a good memory and can still stay on top of things.

I have come to a conclusion that my good health is at least partly due to the fact that I have been a “foodie” since my 30’s. After my divorce in 1975 I have had access to growing my own “past Organic” meat and vegetables. That included raw goat and cow’s milk. Pesticides never touched my plants and the cattle were always on pasture and never “finished” on re-processed food and corn. We raised them an extra year and aged the meat for processing aging, and tenderness.

Even today I steer clear of processed foods and cook from scratch using fresh ingredients. I eat a balanced diet featuring protein (all from natural sources) and lots of vegetables. I don’t drink any type of pop or soda, sweetened or sugar free as I prefer un-sweet tea made from loose tea, not tea bags. I stay away from sugary deserts. I eat peanut butter with just peanuts and salt on whole grain bread made without preservatives. I guess that’s TMI, but that’s the way it is. I use stainless steel & cast iron cookware, don’t store or heat food in plastic ware and never have used non-stick pots or pans. I use glass for baking. I really want to avoid micro-plastics at all costs.

I don’t exercise with weights or the gym but I do get regular exercise working outside and doing animal chores that require lifting, turning, and bending. Even though my current work involves a lot of computer time I still don’t need any help to get out of any chairs and handle all daily chores on my own.

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At 83, I am in good health and have all of my original body parts. My doctor says I am in good health for a man of 60. When I am out shopping I realize I move faster than others, some way younger than me. I don’t do this as a race, it just happens naturally.

As many of my early readers are aware I have been “on-explores” since I was very young. At around 4 I wanted to see the result of plugging a spoon into an electric socket. Fortunately, my Mother kept me safe, but I have been curious and inquisitive all my life, and I still am. I am constantly trying out new things which contributes to my good brain health.

Since my 30’s and my numinous experience, I have been studying how older folks did things, reviving them or adapting them to use today. Like the Amish I try out new things and see if they are appropriate for me. Many times I have adopted new ideas but rejected or refined them when I saw how it affected my own and others lives. As a result of my activities I have produced over 30 how-to high definition videos.

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Some examples of this are that I have both a cell phone and a land line. I have a highly tuned computer system but I don’t play games on either of them. I also try to talk with real people as opposed to machines. I don’t use AI in my writing, but do use it to help me do my current work as an accountant.

In my 30’s I began to study nature seriously and how to live within it’s rules. I am an avid forager, have planted native plants that feed me or wildlife and make sure I have varied habitat to provide shelter to those needing it.

As I look back on my life up until now, I see I have done a lot of teaching and sharing information with other people that are interested and curious. I am now considering sharing more of my findings on the web and in person. If you or others you know are interested let me know in the comments section or e-mail me at Herm.NaturesPace@earthlink.net.

I also have a website at www.SacredTreeFellowship.org that you may be interested in. If you take a look let me know what you think.

That’s all for now but I will share more of my life and ideas in the next few posts. Thanks for reading.

Herm

For the next three or four posts I am going to go back to the beginning and give all you newbies a trip back to my younger self. I will follow up with some intermediate posts and finally get to where I am today at a young and healthy 83, and we will discuss where our adventure will go from here on. I hope you enjoy this blast from the past!

I have been curious about almost everything since I was three or four years old.

One thing that has been true for me is that everything I did last gave me knowledge that I used in my next “adventure”. I call this lifelong learning.

When I was thirteen I started selling Stark Brothers trees and shrubs to folks in my neighborhood. That gave me an opportunity to meet many of my neighbors and their kids. I really enjoyed myself and I gained self confidence in the process.

At fourteen I switched to selling advertising specialties. My Mother drove me back to visit the founder of Quickcrete. We discussed the different items I had for sale and he said that he liked my idea about matchbooks. I ask him how many he thought would need and he answered “one million”. I was totally blown away but we closed the deal and I gained more experience and more self confidence.

At fifteen I was working at my Dad’s car dealership. It was new model time and lots of folks stopped by to view the latest offerings. One customer asked me if we had any problems with the new models. I jokingly told him we had a couple of complaints about the tail lights leaking oil. He perked up and asked if we had fixed the problem. My answer: “Turn the wicks down!” He laughed and he was my first sale for the dealership. So, I sold my first car before I was even licensed to drive.

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After graduation from high school I began studies at Ohio State. I took Business Administration classes and soon realized I knew more about the subject than my professor did! So, I changed my course of studies to Broadcast Speech. That was a wise choice but I already was working for the number one radio station in our marketing area. I went to visit my counselor and we talked about how much time I was absent. I told him about my radio job and working for my Dad’s car dealership.

He advised me to learn from the successful DJ’s at my radio job and to quit school. He said they had a lot more to teach me than I would learn from professors who had never held a paying job in radio.

After that I went to my Dad and said college was not for me I wanted to work in sales at the dealership. He offered to pay me a guarantee against commissions but I turned him down. I said I only wanted to be paid on my actual sales. In a year I was our most successful salesman and moved up to sales manager.

I stayed in that job for five years. The my Dad decided to retire. I decided to start a new business importing products from Europe and tried to start a chain of retail stores that I planned to franchise. This time I had made a decision that was wrong. I picked a board of directors that was comprised mostly of Doctors, Dentists and Attorneys that had no business experience. For the first time in my life I was a failure.

But, life goes on so I decided to go back and take another look at home building.

I went out and got a job on a big condominium project and became in charge of the pre-fab shop. Then I decided to try and find some handyman work after hours and on weekends. I found a good market for my skills and worked on my own for several years.

Photography had been a long time interest of mine and I purchased a fine camera and started teaching myself photography. My son was on a T-ball team and the coach asked if someone would take pictures of the team. I volunteered and he loved my work.

He asked me if I had ever considered a career as an Architectural photographer and I answered I never knew there was such a job. Turned out he was a well known architect and developer. I told him to get me some samples of the work he wanted done and I would give it a shot.

He was happy with my work and that set me on a twenty year stretch as a photographer of Architecture, Interiors, Food and Aerial work. That was the work I did that enabled me to purchase our Appalachian farm in Southern Ohio.

I hope you have found my trek interesting and how I started my next adventure as an Organic farmer, free-range poultry pioneer and teaching others about profitable sustainable farming. Next time I will share more about where I went from there and ended up where I am today. I hope you have learned how important life-long learning can be. Thanks for reading and please leave a comment if you feel like it!

Herman

Today I am going to tell you about my friend Tamarack Song. I have been studying and conversing with Tamarack since I first went to Teaching Drum Outdoor School around 1995 to practice and learn about Native skills.

He is very active authoring many books, some U-Tube videos and leading workshops around the world. He is currently writing a new book about wolves.

There is more I could share about Tamarack and his very interesting life (if you would like to hear more about Tamarack put a note in the comments and I will discuss the possibilities with him), but right now I am going to share a bit of the new book that he is writing presently.

If you don’t catch on right away this is an observation comparing wolf interactions with what we are experiencing now in our own lives every day. Enjoy!

Here is an excerpt from the next book with Wolf, which is her leading us through the morass of criticism and what passes in this day for leadership.

Wolf lives with leadership: a family structure with a breeding pair at its center, and offspring playing various roles based on age and experience. The roles are ever-shifting as pups grow and elders slow. Yet watch how that leadership is enacted, and the resemblance to our leadership approach starts to break down fast. The parents do not use their position to review the family’s performance. Instead, they show their leadership by going first—first into the unknown territory, first to test the ice, first to face down an intruder at the homeland boundary, first to go hungry when a hunt fails and the pups still need to eat. Rank in Wolf’s world is not a platform for handing down verdicts. It is an assignment of who carries the most risk and gives the most. A family recognizes its leaders by what they contribute before it ever asks what they are owed.

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Correction still happens: a growl, a pinned ear, a sharp muzzle grab when a pup crosses a real line—but it is nothing like a performance review, a sermon, a sideline tirade, or a grade. It is immediate, it is over in a second, and it is never filed away to be reread later as evidence. Within moments the same family is play-bowing, muzzle-licking, and rallying back into the closeness the correction briefly interrupted. That’s because the correction was never meant to build a case; it was only intended to keep everyone safe long enough to continue hunting and loving and learning together. And whatever a wolf’s leadership position (as each family member plays some leadership role), the family still feeds her, still keeps her in the cuddle pile at night, still howls with her under the same starry sky.

In Human society, rank governs privilege, which means there are some who never belong. No wolf ever has to wonder, the way we so often do, whether she is loved or only tolerated by the ones above her.

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Nor does a wolf carry the correction inward once it has passed. There is no evidence of a wolf lying awake replaying the growl, refining the apology, rehearsing the next hunt as though the last one were a verdict on her worth. The correction lands, does its narrow job, and is gone. That, dear reader, may be the single habit we most need to borrow, since we are the only animal in this book who has learned to keep correcting ourselves long after everyone else has stopped.

That may be the sharpest difference of all. Human leadership, built the way we have built it—in boardrooms and sanctuaries, on sidelines and around dinner tables, in classrooms and in coaching engagements sold as the cure for the very thing they so often repeat—asks people to earn their standing continually, one review cycle at a time, with belonging always slightly in question and correction always the instrument that decides it, until we no longer need anyone else to hold the instrument at all. Wolf’s leadership asks something else entirely: Go first, give the most, correct only when it truly matters and let it go the moment it has passed, and trust that a family led this way will follow—not because it fears what happens if it doesn’t, but because it has never had a reason not to.

O.k. That’s it for today. I if you would like to check out some of Tamarack’s other works click here: This does not earn me any commissions: https://teachingdrum.org/old-way-wares-book-and-craft-store/

Herman, The Old Buzzard. Thank you for reading!

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He was ninety-five years old. That morning, he’d fallen hard while getting ready for church, splitting his forehead open. Fourteen stitches. A black eye. A big white bandage over half his face. Everyone assumed he’d cancel and rest.

Instead, just hours later, he got on a plane — because he had made a promise, and a bad fall was not going to stop him from keeping it

The man was Jimmy Carter, the thirty-ninth President of the United States. And on the morning of Sunday, October 6th, 2019, he took a serious fall at his home in Plains, Georgia, hitting his forehead on a sharp edge as he got ready for church. It sent him to the hospital, where doctors put fourteen stitches above his eye. He came away with a black eye, heavy bruising, and a large bandage across his brow.

For a man of ninety-five, it was exactly the kind of fall that would send most people straight to bed for a week. And nearly everyone assumed that’s what he would do — cancel his plans and recover. They didn’t know Jimmy Carter very well.

Because that very same afternoon, bandage and black eye and all, he traveled to Nashville, Tennessee. He had somewhere he needed to be. Every year, he and his wife Rosalynn gave a week of their lives to the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project with Habitat for Humanity — rolling up their sleeves alongside ordinary volunteers to build affordable homes for families who needed them. This was the opening of that year’s project, their thirty-sixth, and Carter had no intention of missing it.

That evening, he walked out onto the stage of Nashville’s famous Ryman Auditorium — the injuries plain for the whole crowd to see — introduced by the country stars Garth Brooks and Trisha Yearwood. And he told the volunteers exactly why he hadn’t stayed home.

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“I fell down and hit my forehead on a sharp edge and had to go to the hospital,” he said. “And they took fourteen stitches in my forehead and my eye is black, as you’ve noticed. But I had a number one priority, and that was to come to Nashville and build houses.”

Here is the thing that tells you who he really was. He wasn’t grim about it. He wasn’t playing the martyr. Standing there stitched-up and bruised, he was in visibly good spirits — cracking jokes with the crowd, teasing Garth Brooks that he’d once watched his wife Trisha do all the hard work up in the rafters of a house, and proudly pointing to his Atlanta Braves cap to note that his team had won that day. A ninety-five-year-old man with fourteen fresh stitches, and he was the one lifting everyone else’s spirits. Then he proved his words weren’t just for the stage: The very next morning, Jimmy Carter was out on the build site. Not watching. Not supervising from a comfortable chair. Working. Photographs from that week show the former president — bandage still over his eye — carrying lumber, drilling nails into boards, laboring shoulder-to-shoulder with the volunteers and the future homeowners and his beloved Rosalynn. Over that single week, the team built twenty-one homes for Nashville families.

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This was not some one-time photo opportunity for the Carters. It was who they were. It had begun back in 1984, when the former President and First Lady traveled to New York City’s Lower East Side to help renovate a run-down building into affordable apartments — the very first Carter Work Project.

From that start, it became a fixture of their lives: one full week, every single year, for the next thirty-five years. They didn’t lend their names and pose for a photo. They showed up in work boots and jeans and the same blue volunteer T-shirt everyone else wore, and they labored. Carter, by every account, had a genuine, no-nonsense work ethic on a build site — the kind that made the other volunteers work a little harder just watching him. Across those decades, the Carter Work Project helped build or repair well over four thousand homes across fourteen countries, alongside more than a hundred thousand volunteers, helping families reach the dream of a home they could call their own.

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And when you consider the shape of Jimmy Carter’s whole extraordinary life, that’s what makes this moment so telling. This was a man who had sat in the Oval Office as President of the United States. A man who had won the Nobel Peace Prize. A man who spent decades of his life working to advance peace, fight disease, and defend human rights in the farthest corners of the earth. He held some of the most powerful and prestigious positions a human being can hold.

And yet, for so many people, the image of him that stays lodged in the heart isn’t from the White House at all

It’s this one. A ninety-five-year-old man, his face stitched and bruised, showing up anyway — hammer in hand, keeping a quiet promise to build homes for families he had never met and would likely never see again. He had nothing left to prove to anyone, no election to win, no title to chase. He just believed the work mattered, and so he did it.

Jimmy Carter passed away on December 29th, 2024, at the age of one hundred. And when the tributes poured in, it was moments exactly like this one that so many people reached for. Because his legacy, in the end, wasn’t measured only by the offices he had held or the honors he had won. It was measured by something simpler and harder: the promises he kept going, even when keeping them meant showing up battered and bandaged and doing the work anyway. He could have rested. Anyone would have understood. He chose, instead, to go build houses for strangers.

Did you follow Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s work with Habitat for Humanity over the years? Tell us in the comments. And here’s one for today: when you look back on a person’s whole life, what do you think leaves the greater legacy — the titles they earn, or the promises they keep?

Buzz

Here is a story about the life of a man who made his own way through life. Not only was he a very smart and talented man, he was versatile as well. A self starter that accomplished major goals in several different fields. Let’s get a start near the beginning. We have a long way to go.

Kris was a Rhodes Scholar. An Army Ranger, a helicopter pilot, and a janitor. And then, one afternoon in 1969, he landed a helicopter in Johnny Cash’s backyard with a demo tape in his hand that changed country music forever. This is the life story about Kris Kristofferson.

He was born on June 22, 1936, in Brownsville, Texas. A border town where, he would later say, he learned to speak Spanish before English. His father was an Air Force major general. His grandfather had been an officer in the Royal Swedish Army. His brother became a naval aviator. The expectation in the Kristofferson family was never a question. You served, you sacrificed and you followed the line.

Kris started down that path but then he left that path entirely. At Pomona College in California, he was a Golden Gloves boxer, a rugby standout, and a straight-A student of creative literature. In 1958, at age 22, he won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University in England, where he studied the works of William Blake and wrote fiction seriously enough to publish short stories while still a student. He graduated in 1960 with a master’s degree in English literature.

After that, he came home, married his sweetheart, joined the Army, and trained as a Ranger. He became a helicopter pilot. He served in West Germany. He volunteered for Vietnam. The Army had other plans for him — and instead offered him something that sounded like a dream: a professorship teaching English literature at West Point. He said no, thank you.

It’s now 1965. He is 29 years old. He resigns his Army commission 2 weeks before he is supposed to report to West Point. His parents were angry. His marriage begins to crack. He packs up and drives to Nashville, Tennessee, with nothing but songs in his head and a name nobody there has heard.

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Here is what most people don’t know: for more than 4 years, Kris Kristofferson was invisible. He worked as a bartender, a construction worker and a railroad hand. He gets a job sweeping floors and emptying ashtrays at Columbia Recording Studios — the same building where Bob Dylan is cutting Blonde on Blonde just down the hall. He sees Johnny Cash in the corridors. Cash nods at him the way you nod at a janitor. He tries to slip Cash his demo tapes. Cash brings them home to his property on Old Hickory Lake in Hendersonville, Tennessee — and, according to Cash himself, throws most of them into the lake.

For extra income, Kristofferson takes a weekend job with the Tennessee National Guard, flying helicopters. During the week, he works oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico for Petroleum Helicopters International in Louisiana: flying workers out to the platforms, writing songs on top of the rig at night, then driving back to Nashville on weekends to pitch them around town.

But nothing sticks. He enters his 30s. His parents consider him a failure. His marriage ended in 1969. And then, sometime in that same year Kris Kristofferson makes a decision that only a man with nothing left to lose could make: He deviates from his National Guard flight plan, points the helicopter toward Hendersonville, Tennessee and sets it down in Johnny Cash’s backyard.

Johnny Cash later told the story this way: June Carter looked out the window and said, “Some fool has landed a helicopter in our yard. They used to come from the road. Now they’re coming from the sky.” Kris himself said it differently — he remembers Cash wasn’t even home when he landed. Either way, the stunt worked. Cash finally paid attention.

In 1970 Cash records “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” A song about waking up after a hard night with nothing and no one. It goes to number 1 on the Billboard Country chart. When Cash performs it on his ABC television show that June, network executives demand he change the word “stoned” in the lyric “wishing, Lord, that I was stoned.” Cash refuses. He performs it exactly as Kris wrote it.

In October 1970, the Country Music Association names “Sunday Morning Coming Down” Song of the Year. Kristofferson accepts the award in jeans — at a ceremony where everyone else is in formal wear. A Rhodes Scholar and Army Ranger, standing at the podium in denim, winning country music’s highest song writing honor for a song about wishing you were stoned on a Sunday morning.

In 1971, Janis Joplin’s recording of his “Me and Bobby McGee” — a song he had written while flying above oil rigs in the Gulf — hits number one on the pop charts posthumously. She had died of a heroin overdose in October 1970, just before it was released. Kristofferson and Joplin had been close. He would say later that when he first heard her version of the song, he could not even listen all the way through.

That same year, Sammi Smith’s recording of his “Help Me Make It Through the Night” wins a Grammy. He is named Songwriter of the Year. He had written three of the biggest songs in America — while working a helicopter gig to pay his rent.

He goes on to act in more than 50 films. He wins a Golden Globe for A Star Is Born alongside Barbra Streisand in 1976. He forms the Highwaymen supergroup in 1985 with Cash, Willie Nelson, and Waylon Jennings. He is inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1985 and The Country Music Hall of Fame in 2004.

Kris died peacefully at home in Hawaii on September 28, 2024, at age 88. His family signed their statement: “When you see a rainbow, know he’s smiling down on us all.”

The Old Buzzard

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He was inside a worn plastic carrier, curled up on a faded blue towel that still smelled faintly of lavender. Next to him was a small grocery bag with a half-used bag of kibble, two cans of food, his favorite red yarn ball, and a tiny green scarf wrapped around his neck—the one Evelyn had knitted for him the previous winter

.

He didn’t cry. He didn’t scratch at the carrier. He simply looked at me with patient, searching eyes, as though he already knew something I didn’t.

Taped to the handle was an envelope with my name written in Evelyn’s trembling handwriting.

Inside was only one sentence.

*”I’m sorry to leave you the one thing I couldn’t take with me.”*

I had to sit down before I could read it again.

Evelyn had lived next door for almost eight years. She was seventy-eight, a widow, and so petite that grocery bags always looked heavier than they should in her hands. Every afternoon she watered the flowers on her porch, and every evening she would somehow catch me outside just long enough for a conversation.

“How are your cats doing today?” she’d ask with a warm smile.

I’d answer politely. Usually too quickly.

I always had work waiting, emails piling up, deadlines to meet, and three cats already filling my small house with enough chaos to last a lifetime.

Looking back, I realized she hadn’t really been asking about my cats. She had simply been hoping I would stay a little longer.

Poca hadn’t always belonged to Evelyn. One freezing January morning she found him hiding beneath her old sedan, shivering so hard he could barely stand. He was little more than skin and bones, soaked from melting snow.

She carried him inside tucked beneath her coat.

A few days later she told me, smiling as Poca slept in her lap, “He didn’t choose my house. He just found the only door that opened.”

At the time, I smiled politely and thought nothing more about it.

Now those words echoed through my mind.

I carried the carrier into my living room while my three cats watched cautiously from the hallway.

Poca stayed pressed against the back.

I opened the carrier, placed food and fresh water nearby, then quietly sat on the floor.

“You’re safe,” I whispered.

He never moved.

Later that afternoon, I called the local shelter.

They had room for him first thing the next morning.

It seemed like the responsible choice.

My oldest cat needed daily medication. Another refused to tolerate any new animal. Money was already tight.

Adding a fourth cat simply wasn’t practical.

I repeated those reasons to myself all evening.

None of them made me feel any better.

After dark, Poca finally stepped out.

He ignored the food completely.

Instead, he walked straight to my front door and sat facing it.

Every time headlights swept across the window, his ears stood up. Every time someone closed a car door outside, he slowly rose to his feet.

He wasn’t waiting for dinner.

He was waiting for Evelyn to come home.

Watching him broke something inside me.

Around midnight I heard quiet scratching coming from the grocery bag Evelyn had packed.

Poca was pawing beneath the towel.

Curious, I reached inside and found a tiny voice recorder.

With shaking hands, I pressed play.

Evelyn’s gentle voice filled the room.

Soft. Fragile. Comfortingly familiar.

“Poca,” she began, “if one day I don’t come home... please don’t think I left because I wanted to.”

There was a long silence.

Then she chuckled softly.

“You may have to stay next door. She always says she already has too many cats... but she puts food outside for the strays when she thinks nobody is watching.”

My eyes instantly filled with tears.

She had noticed.

The bowls behind my garage during winter.

The old blankets inside the little shelter box.

The quiet things I never told anyone about because they felt too small to matter.

She had seen kindness in me long before I ever recognized it myself.

Then came her final words.

“Don’t be scared, little boy. Love doesn’t disappear... sometimes it just changes addresses.”

I couldn’t listen anymore.

The tears came all at once.

As if he understood, Poca quietly walked away from the front door for the very first time and gently touched his nose against my knee.

It felt like he was comforting me.

The next morning I placed his carrier beside the door.

I still told myself I was taking him to the shelter.

Poca climbed inside without hesitation.

He curled around Evelyn’s green scarf and rested his head, almost as though he had already learned not to ask where he was going anymore.

My hand reached for the carrier door.

Then I remembered Evelyn’s words.

He found the only door that opened.

I slowly removed the carrier door instead.

Then I walked into the kitchen.

Without thinking any further, I took a fourth bowl from the cupboard and placed it beside the other three.

It fit there as though it had always belonged.

The first few days weren’t easy.

Poca stayed hidden beneath the dining table.

At night he still slept beside the front door, quietly hoping to hear familiar footsteps that would never come again.

Grief doesn’t disappear overnight.

Not for people.

Not for animals.

But little by little, the fourth food bowl began to empty each morning.

My oldest cat stopped hissing.

The youngest even left one of his favorite toys beside Poca while he slept.

It felt less like they were accepting a stranger and more like they were making room for someone carrying a broken heart.

A week later, I walked into the living room and found Poca asleep in Evelyn’s favorite chair—the one she always sat in whenever she came over for coffee.

For the first time since arriving, he looked completely at peace.

I took Evelyn’s note from my desk and turned it over.

On the back, I quietly wrote:

*”Poca’s new home is still right next door. He misses you every day. So do I.”*

People often think rescuing an animal means giving it food, shelter, or a warm place to sleep.

Sometimes it means something much quieter.

Sometimes it means protecting the final piece of someone’s love.

We don’t always get to choose how our stories begin.

But every now and then, someone opens a door...

...and because of that simple act of kindness, another story gets to continue.

If you would enjoy other stories like this let me know in the comments section

And if you would like more from the Best Cat Page click here:

The Best Cat Page

@thebestcatpageofficial · Digital creator

Herman Beck-Chenoweth

Netflix, Spotify, or Amazon Prime are one thing. But now we pay monthly fees for everything from razor blades and snack foods to pet care and ride share perks.

It’s known as the subscription economy — and it seems to have seeped into most corners of consumer life. Businesses love the steady, guaranteed revenue and customer loyalty. We’re drawn to the low upfront costs and set-it-and-forget-it convenience.

But that convenience can also be a financial trap. When you’re charged whether you use something or not, it’s easier to keep paying for it even after you don’t need it. Maybe you subscribe to a dating app or job board, but then let it ride even after you’re in a relationship or land a new position.

“This is the biggest low-hanging fruit in people’s budget these days, So many services have shifted to subscription pricing because $15 a month seems like nothing. But it adds up, and most people end up spending money on things they don’t need or use.”

The average American spends $69 a month on 5.2 subscriptions, according to a January survey commissioned by Bango, a subscription platform for companies. Twenty-three percent of those surveyed — including 41% of Gen Z — said they spend more than they can afford.

In fact, research suggests people tend to spend far more on subscriptions than they realize. And now, to make things even worse: Companies are now asking us to sign up for a year (or even longer) paid up front before we have even used any services at all.

Subscriptions aren’t going anywhere — and when used properly, it’s nice to have one less thing to think about.

The risk is accumulating charges that fly under the radar, especially with the rising cost of living. In a CNET survey last year, 61% of respondents were reconsidering paid subscriptions because of the state of the economy, and 26% had already cancelled at least one.

To make sure you’re not wasting money, here are a few ways to protect your budget:

Conduct an audit. Go through your recent bank statements or use a spending tracker to filter out your recurring charges. Then ask yourself when you last actually used the product, or in the case of premium versions, benefited from the add-on benefits. If the answer is “more than a few months ago” or “I can’t remember,” it could be time to cancel.

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Some auto pays are a good value. Setting up autopay for your electric bill or mortgage is a practical way to avoid forgetting critical payments — and keep your household running. And you’re unlikely to stay subscribed to special coffee that you can get into trouble.

Outsmart the free-trial trap. It’s easy to forget to cancel a free trial. Almost half of respondents in a recent Cabletv.com survey did, making these one of the most effective tools in a subscription company’s arsenal. Especially when the trial period is so short that you can’t even evaluate that the subscription is worth keeping.

Another smart thing to do is to go an extra step and see what the subscription is going to charge you to renew in the future: Just last week I was about to sign on to a new subscription that was $99.00 per year, but when I went and read the fine print (usually on the next page) I discovered that I was going to be billed $199.00 when they renewed my subscription. This step alone can eliminate a nasty surprise.

• Many of us have used the free-trial period of a streaming app to watch a single binge-worthy show. But since free trials often require you to give your credit card, set a few calendar reminders so you don’t forget to opt out before your first bill.

Look at how to cancel, skip, or change the shipment or service before you sign up. Hopefully you have found some useful information here.

• Look closely at the sign-up page for boxes that are automatically checked off; Leaving them selected could give the company permission to charge you or share your data.

“In the fall of 1966, roughly 30 tenth-grade students in Rabun County, Georgia - a mountain community of just 8,000 people - walked out of their English classroom and into the hills of Appalachia. They weren’t on a field trip. They were on a mission.

And most of them had no idea what they were about to find.”

The school sits in a valley hemmed in by ridge lines. The nearest city is hours away. Most of the students have spent their whole lives here - hunting, farming, attending the same small church their grandparents attended.

Their English class isn’t going well. The standard curriculum means nothing to them. Grammar exercises feel abstract. Literature feels imported from somewhere else.

So one afternoon, their teacher does something unusual. He stops the lesson. He asks them, plainly: What would actually make you want to learn?

The students talk it over. Someone suggests a magazine. Someone else says it should be about here - about the people right outside these windows, the old men and women who still know things the modern world has already forgotten.

The class votes yes.

They name their new project after a bioluminescent fungus that grows on rotting logs in these mountains - a fungus that glows blue-green in the dark, visible only if you know where to look. They call it Foxfire.

March 1967. Volume 1, Issue 1.

The students raise $400 from parents and local donors. They sell advertising to nearby businesses. They teach themselves to use a reel-to-reel tape recorder. They learn photography from scratch.

And then, notebooks in hand, they fan out into the surrounding hills to sit with their grandparents, their neighbors, their elders - people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s who still live without refrigerators, without running water, without telephones.

What the students find stops them cold.

They find a woman named Aunt Arie Carpenter, 80 years old, living alone in a hand-built cabin, churning butter the same way her mother taught her, growing her own food, preserving her own meat. She tells them stories. She shows them her hands. She asks them if they want some coffee.

They find men who know how to notch a log cabin so it will stand for 200 years without a single nail. Women who know which plants in the forest treat fever and which ones stop bleeding.

Families who have been making moonshine in copper stills since before their great-grandparents were born. Preachers who handle serpents as an act of faith. Quilters whose patterns carry the names of mountains and seasons.

Here’s what makes it worse: almost none of it was written down anywhere.

These weren’t just skills. They were an entire civilization - one that had developed over 200 years in the isolation of the southern Appalachian range, shaped by hardship and self-reliance and a particular relationship to the land.

And it was disappearing. Not slowly. Fast. The elders were aging. The young were moving to cities. Within a generation, the knowledge would be gone - dissolved into history without a trace. The students understood this before their parents did. Before anyone with a publishing contract did.

1967. The first issue sells out. All 600 copies are gone within days. Letters start arriving from across Georgia, asking for more. Then from other states. Then from people who had grown up in Appalachia and moved away decades earlier, who read a description of the first issue in a local paper and wrote in trembling handwriting asking, Is Aunt Arie still alive? Can you ask her if she remembers my family?

The students publish a second issue. Then a third. They work weekends. Some of them spend their afternoons after school driving into the hills for more interviews, more photographs, more tape recordings. They are teenagers doing the work that professional folklorists and archivists had never bothered to do. 1972. Doubleday publishes The Foxfire Book.

The students’ collected interviews — on log cabin building, hog dressing, planting by the signs, snake lore, faith healing, moonshining, wild plant foods — are compiled into a single volume.

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It sells 2 million copies in its first decade. Then keeps selling. By the time the 12-volume series is complete, the Foxfire books have sold over 9 million copies - making them one of the best-selling non-fiction series in American publishing history. Not because of clever marketing. Because the students had preserved something real that the rest of the country hadn’t known it was losing.

What the students built with the money changes everything. They don’t pocket the royalties. They are teenagers - and they vote to put it back into the community.

They purchase land on Black Rock Mountain in Mountain City, Georgia. They disassemble historic log structures from across the region and rebuild them on the site.

They create a 32-building museum and heritage center, staffed by local people, demonstrating blacksmithing, basket weaving, butter churning, and traditional building methods to visitors from across the country. Foxfire Over the Years

The Foxfire Fund generates over $1 million in college scholarships for Rabun County students over the decades that follow. Dozens of similar oral history projects - modeled directly on Foxfire - spring up in schools from Texas to Maine, on Native American reservations in Montana and New Mexico, in Navajo communities in New Mexico and Eskimo communities in Alaska.

What no one mentions is the quiet revolution underneath all of it.

These were not exceptional students. They were bored teenagers in a rural county school who, by most metrics, were headed for an unremarkable year of forgotten grammar lessons. The elders they interviewed were not famous. They had no platforms, no recognition, no plaques on walls. But the students saw what the world was about to lose — and they picked up tape recorders.

Maude Shope told a Foxfire student in 1972, I never did try to drive a car. My mule is the way I got around. That sentence exists today because a 15-year-old wrote it down. Because they showed up, sat across from her, and listened like it mattered.

It did matter. It still does.

The Foxfire Magazine continues to be published today, still produced by high school students in Rabun County each summer. The museum still stands. The recordings still exist. The voices of those elders - the quilters, the moonshiners, the herbalists, the preachers, the cabin builders - are still audible on tape.

Because 30 teenagers in 1966 decided that the people right outside their classroom windows were worth remembering. Share this with someone who needs to know - that ordinary people, paying attention, can preserve what the world is about to forget.” If you want to visit click here: Visit Firefox

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Herman, The Old Buzzard

I had been gardening and raising some poultry since I was eight. I entered some vegetables in the Ohio State Fair and took home 4 awards. My brother, who was eight years older than I, had been farming since he was eleven: He sold sweet corn to restaurants and did very well. He joined the Future Farmers of America and became a National Star Farmer. I helped him plant and harvest crops as a teenager. He went on to become a very successful commodity farmer eventually owning over 3,000 acres. It turned out that his land was prime for development so he became an infrastructure contractor installing roads and water lines to the areas he had previously farmed. Using profits from his business he became a real estate investor building and leasing properties.

Meanwhile I was moving forward in photography business and began writing articles and teaching seminars to other photographers. My wife and I both wanted to farm so we purchased 16o acres in Southern Ohio. One of our first purchases was a flock of laying chickens. When the chicks arrived it was clear that Linda had fallen in love with them. Still wanting poultry I decided to purchase 25 turkeys. She asked what I planned to do with them, and I said put them on range, and in the fall put them in our barnyard close to the road. People stopped and asked if they were available for the Holidays. I said sure and we pretty much sold out the birds. Not having any processing equipment we plucked and processed them by hand!

Meanwhile I had been a founding member of Innovative Farmers of Ohio and had full access to Ohio State’s agriculture programs. I became interested in free-range poultry which had gone out of style because of big confinement housing. Shortly thereafter I begin checking out poultry production around the world and discovered that free-range was very successful in Europe and proceeded to develop the system on our farm. Soon, demand out-paced our supply. I went to out and searched for print materials that detailed U.S. operations before the confinement houses. I received an award from the Humane Society for the humaneness of free-range and treatment of the birds.

Another system was in use for small-scale growers but my system was designed for full-time farmers serving larger markets. We soon added free-range egg layers to our farm and installed a semi-automated meat bird processing system. All my workers arrived by school bus and earned adult wages for their work. We were able to process 200 birds per two hour shift

Now, we had poultry manure and slaughter house waste enough that we were able to build a six acre garden using no purchased materials. We sold all of our birds, eggs and vegetables to restaurants and at Farmer’s Markets. All during this time my brother was telling me that poultry and vegetables were not profitable enough to keep a farm afloat.

Around this time the USDA and Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education

folks begin asking me to teach others our systems. We received the first USDA grant that was ever given to a non-land grant university. Using those funds I wrote a production manual for free-range poultry and produced a video showing how things worked.

I should note that we were operating as an intentional community and sharing income with our members. (More on that in another post).

We were spending a lot of time on the road teaching Agricultural Agents how to teach their farmers to do this work. A lot of our work was done in Missouri so one time we were out here teaching we decided to see what kind of properties were available that would meet our needs. We found a 175 acre farm with a mile of river frontage, springs and evenly split between tillable land, pasture and mature forests. We decided to purchase some land and move to Missouri.

As soon as we returned to Ohio My Father who had Alzheimer’s asked if he could come and live with us. So we were challenged but we did manage to give our profitable enterprises to interested local farmers and move to Missouri. Our new property included a two room cabin, which we shared with Dad, and a large business area with rooms for our members.

We stayed on that property for eighteen years. During that time we were approached several times by the National Park Service to sell our farm and making it part of the Ozark National Scenic River ways. After making some agonizing decisions

we agreed to sell in 2018.

Unfortunately, after over 40 years of marriage we separated. We tried to work out our differences but were unsuccessful. Now I live with my wife of five years on three rural acres in South-Central Missouri. More about what we are doing here next time!

Herman

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Many of you already know a little about my life starting after my divorce that ended around 1972. I had been an entrepreneur, purchased my father’s business and was on a track to become the wiz kid in my area. I had my trophy wife who spent more every year than I made. I pleaded with my bank to not increase my credit card limits but they did anyway.

The big change in my life took place when I needed to make some major decisions. In high school I had worked with a gentleman that built luxury homes. His workers taught me how to be a “punch out man”. I was taught how to correct all the mistakes other workers made. I never realized until later how valuable that training was.

I went out and got a construction job to learn the business. I was a quick study and before long I was doing my own projects for a pretty good income. Unfortunately my wife said that she was not going to stay married to a man that carried a lunch box and drove a pickup truck. So, I received my walking papers. I won’t go further down this road today except that my work lead me to head my life in a totally different direction. I took a job remodeling a book store in a mall and had to do all my work when the store was closed.

On my breaks I read a lot of books, including the Mother Earth News. I learned things that made me realize that my life was on the wrong track, I moved in with my Grandmother who lived on 7 acres. She had a catering business and she trained me to be a chef. I gardened and made great strides to live off the land.

When I moved out of her house I moved to an old sheep shed and turned it into “Herm’s Hippy Home”. I heated with wood, used it as my business quarters and fixed it up so that my two kids could stay with me on their visitation weekends. I did a booming business being a handyman and building room additions.

It was during this time that I met the woman who eventually became my friend, lover and wife for over 40 years. Overall, they were good years, but we had some slim ones as well. We both loved farming and using the money we were earning from our thriving aerial, architectural, interior and food photography business we found our farm and begin years of being important to the Small Farm movement, selling our products directly to restaurants, at Farmer’s Markets and directly to consumers. I became a leader in teaching many family farmers how to be successful.

One day around 1995 I was mowing hay and all of the sudden thoughts from somewhere were giving me instructions about how I needed to use my life to help people live better and respect the earth. I stopped my tractor and pulled out my ever-present pocket notebook and started writing.

After pondering during the next several days I discovered many things I had not known about myself. I realized that all my life I had been looking at the world through wide angle vision (Indian vision). I saw the interconnectedness of all plants and beings. I had also been told that I needed to teach these ideas to other interested folks.

That is when I began to research Native American Ways and begin to practice native spirituality. It changed my life completely. While there are many ways to practice spirituality honoring the old ways worked for me.

As a part of this discovery I began to learn more about the animals around me. I purchased a book titled Animal Speak. Each day I spent some quiet time outdoors in a secluded spot. I learned that if I was quiet and still enough birds, squirrels, snakes and other animals just didn’t visit me they actually climbed on me and interacted with me.

It took some time as I learned more about animal behavior and traits to discover my Totem animal: a vulture commonly known as a Turkey Buzzard. I discovered that the buzzard is a very misunderstood bird that is an important player in the environment.

Buzzards do not kill to eat, they actually clean up sites where death has occurred. They share their meal with myriads of other life such as birds of prey, insects, and mammals.

They are especially equipped to be immune to disease spreading organisms. In spite of their unusual job they are very clean and are one of nature’s best flyers. They take their important role in cleaning up a kill site very seriously.

So that in a nutshell is why my totem is the turkey buzzard and since I am 82, I am “The Old Buzzard”. If you are interested in learning more about me or “Native American Spirituality for the Modern World, Just click here to visit The Sacred Tree Fellowship.org.

I know this has been a much longer than usual post but I hope you have learned a lot and enjoyed the read. Please click below if you would like to share a comment. I would love to hear from you!

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Herman Beck-Chenoweth, “The Old Buzzard”

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Most of us know the feeling of being stuck on hold, or spending time clicking through an endless series of pages to cancel a subscription, or screening spam calls, or trying to change a flight.

These inconveniences make life less pleasant, but they are easy enough to write off as small concerns, as the mere stuff of living a contemporary existence. It turns out that such time-sucking, tedious tasks have a meaningful economic impact.

The accumulated cost of what some refer to as the “annoyance economy” adds up to $165 billion a year in lost time and wasted money for American families, according to a new report from a Stanford economist, and a policy fellow at Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive research organization.

The annoyance economy includes the everyday interactions that should be simple but often turn into fraught ordeals: including dealing with hidden fees, spam, insurance claims or byzantine cancellation processes.

The co-authors of the original report worked together in the Biden administration, including on efforts to crack down on junk fees. Once they left government service, they started thinking about how to tackle what they saw as a “broader set of annoyances and tricks and traps and frustrations that turn simple things into things which are costly and complex.”

At first, the authors did not know what to call this group of consumer problems. But as they kept working on the project, they landed on the term “annoyance economy.” Once they did, “it became obvious that it connected these different interactions people have.” (The term had appeared elsewhere, including in a 2023 Atlantic article about consumer frustrations.)

Some of the inconveniences plaguing American consumers are a result of clunky processes and outdated regulation. But some, are “intentionally designed” to take advantage of people. And the rise of artificial intelligence chatbots that pose as real people is advancing the capacity for companies to mislead and target consumers.

Scammers will be more adept at using A.I. to scam us than we will be at using it to detect scams.

Intentional or not, trapping consumers can pay off for corporations: researchers have found that companies that make it harder to cancel subscriptions see revenues tick up 14 to 200 percent. Beyond wasting money and time, logistical blocks can even affect health.

2019 study found that almost a quarter of respondents had forgone or delayed health care because of administrative tasks like scheduling appointments and resolving insurance billing issues.

The annoyance economy is almost universally disliked. People, it turns out, hate being ripped off and resent having their time wasted. In a 2024 YouGov poll, 87 percent of respondents strongly or somewhat supported restrictions on telemarketers’ use of robocalling. In a 2025 poll from Groundwork and Data for Progress, two-thirds of likely voters said they wanted Congress to make addressing such issues a priority.

The consistent inconveniences that people face in their day-to-day lives become a reminder about how the system is stacked against them, Public distaste could help spur lawmakers to mandate more consumer-friendly policies and companies to dial back fees and the like.

This will take some work, but it is possible. We put people on the moon 50 years •

ago, We should be able to figure out spam texts and phone calls and “helpful” (NOT) chatbots or A.I. helpers.

I’ll follow up this discussion in my next post with suggestions on how we can deal with this right now.

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The Old Buzzard

The biggest change to voting in the current Republican election bill could become a burden for many. Joshua Bogdan was born and raised in the United States. The only time the New Hampshire resident has left the country was for a day and a half in seventh grade, when he went to Canada to see Niagara Falls.

Even so, that did not mean proving his U.S. citizenship in last fall’s local elections was easy.

The 31-year-old arrived at his voting place in Portsmouth Ohio and handed the poll worker his driver’s license, just as he had done in other towns when arriving to vote. She said that would no longer do.

The poll worker said that under the state’s new proof-of-citizenship law, which took effect for the first time during town elections in 2025, Bogdan would need a passport or his birth certificate because he had moved and needed to re-register at his new address. A scramble ensued, turning the voting process that he had always found fun and invigorating into a nerve-wracking game of beat the clock.

“I didn’t know that anything had officially changed walking in there,” he said. “And then being told that I had to provide a passport that I’ve never had or a birth certificate that’s usually tucked away somewhere safe just to cast my vote — which I’ve done before — it was frustrating.”

Bogdan’s experience in New Hampshire is a glimpse into the future for potentially millions of voters across the country. That is if Republican voting legislation being pushed aggressively by President Donald Trump passes Congress and a “show your papers” law is put in place in time for the November elections.

The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility, or SAVE America Act, cleared the U.S. House last month on a mostly party-line basis. Republicans say it would improve election integrity. Trump has called its safeguards common sense. The bill is scheduled to come up in the U.S. Senate next week for voting and debate.

Republican messaging has mostly highlighted a less divisive provision in the bill that would require voters to show a photo ID, but the mandate for people to provide documentary proof of citizenship to register to vote in federal elections is likely to have the most wide-ranging consequences. Non-citizens already are prohibited from voting in federal elections, and it is not allowed by any state. Cases where it occurs are rare.

Obtaining the necessary documents under the SAVE Act is not as easy as it might sound. A similar effort was tried in Kansas a decade ago and turned into a debacle that eventually was blocked by the courts after more than 30,000 eligible citizens were prevented from registering.

There is a long list of documents to use, but with caveats. Rebekah Caruthers, president and CEO at the Fair Elections Center, said the legislation’s strict documentation requirements could move the U.S. “in the opposite direction” of representative democracy.

“If this bill passes, it would deny millions of eligible Americans their fundamental freedom to vote,” she said. “This includes millions of people who make up your communities, including married women, people of color and voters who live in rural areas.”

The list of qualifying documents in the SAVE Act for proving citizenship appears long, but many of them come with qualifiers.

Under the bill, a REAL ID -compliant driver’s license would have to indicate that “the applicant is a citizen,” but not all do. Only five states — Michigan, Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington — offer the type of enhanced REAL IDs that explicitly indicate U.S. citizenship. Missouri’s does not.

Standard driver’s licenses, generally available to both citizens and non-citizens, often do not include a citizenship indicator. Some states, including Ohio, have recently added them.

The stipulations continue, buried in the fine print.

While military ID cards are listed as qualifying documents under the act, they will not suffice on their own. The bill says a military ID must be accompanied by a military “record of service” that indicates the person’s birthplace was in the U.S.

A DD214, the current standard-issue certificate of release or discharge for all military service branches, does not currently fulfill that requirement. According to the Pentagon, that document only lists where someone lived at points of entry and discharge and a person’s current home of record. It does not list where someone was born.

Obtaining a passport requires time and money (Approximately $275.00)

For most provisions, the SAVE Act contains no phase-in period that would give voters and local election offices time to adjust. If passed by Congress and signed by Trump, its documentary proof-of-citizenship mandate would apply immediately, meaning it would be in place for this year’s midterm elections.

That could lead to a rush to obtain documents by those who want to register or need to re-register. A 2025 University of Maryland study estimates that 21.3 million Americans who are eligible to vote do not have or have easy access to documents to prove their citizenship, including nearly 10% of Democrats, 7% of Republicans and 14% of people unaffiliated with either major party.

A passport would most effectively meet the requirement, but only about half of American adults have one, according to the State Department, and the SAVE Act requires the passport to be current. An expired one does not count. Obtaining a passport in time for a looming voter registration deadline is another potential hurdle.

Workers who process passports had layoffs at the State Department reversed, but just last month the department forbid passport processing at certain public libraries that had long helped relieve pressure at the department. Government libraries, post offices, county clerks and others still provide the service.

It takes four weeks to six weeks to get a passport, according to the department’s website, excluding mailing time. A new passport costs $165 for adults while renewals cost $130, and the photo costs $10 or $20 more. The turnaround time can be sped up to two weeks or three weeks for an additional $60 — and for even faster processing, add $22 more. The fully expedited process for a new passport would cost at least $257.

Birth and marriage certificates

A birth certificate may be a quicker and cheaper choice for most people, but there are twists.

The SAVE Act requires a certified birth certificate issued by a state, local government or tribal government. What does not appear to qualify is the certificate signed by the doctor that many new parents are given in the hospital when their child is born. It provides information similar to a certified birth certificate, but would not meet the letter of the federal legislation.

Like passports, birth certificates can sometimes take weeks to obtain. Those who live near their birthplaces can visit the local vital statistics office, but staffing shortages and escalating demand for REAL IDs have caused significant backlogs in some states. In New York, the waiting period for certified copies is four months, the state said. Average processing times for online certificate requests vary widely by state, from as few as three days to 12 weeks or longer.

People whose birth certificates don’t match their current IDs — mostly women who changed their names when they married — would likely need additional documentation to register to vote under the bill. A 2023 Pew Research Center survey found about 80% of women in opposite-sex marriages in the U.S. take their husband’s last name.

A major change to the voting process, but with no extra money

Notably, the SAVE Act does not provide any money to help states and local governments implement the changes or promote them to voters.

For Bogdan, that was part of the problem when New Hampshire’s proof-of-citizenship law took effect. People who have voted elsewhere in the state are not required to show proof of citizenship in their new towns if poll workers confirm their registration history, but Bogdan said workers at his polling place did not seem to know that or try to look up the information.

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He eventually was able to cast his ballot because, by luck, he had recently retrieved his birth certificate from his parents’ house more than an hour away so he could apply for a REAL ID. But he said government notices to voters would help prevent possible disenfranchisement.

“Young voters like myself don’t always carry around our birth certificate, Social Security card, all that important stuff, because it’s not used ever or very often,” he said. “And so all those young kids who are going to go out and try and vote will be held back from that.”

their name for non-marriage or non-adoption reasons, passports, adoption paperwork which documents name change, marriage license(s) to document name change(s) as there may be multiple marriages so multiple name changes, military documents for military personnel born on military bases in foreign countries, and naturalization paperwork for naturalized US citizens, voting on election day will become impossible because of the time involved and the complexity of the paperwork.

This doesn’t even address citizens lacking a driver’s license because they do not drive and US citizens who do not have a copy of their birth certificate,

In addition, how will mail-in voting (which dates back to the Civil War) accommodate all of these forms of ID? What identity theft issues arise from mailing copies (notarized?) of voter’s ID?

Eliminating mail-in voting is simply a non-starter for the elderly, handicapped, people that are out of their voting district on election day, people in hospitals and nursing homes, rural communities with long drives to a polling station, people that cannot get away from work on election day, child care requirements, people without a car or that do not drive, people with health concerns over crowded polling stations, and because of the huge number of people that would have to vote on a single day.

Bottom line here is to check and make sure your documents are in order starting right now before it is too late.

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Thanks for reading and hope all the best for you

Herman Beck-Chenoweth, The Old Buzzard

But Me A Beer

We are often called “the elderly,” but that quiet label hides a truth most people rarely pause to consider—we are the last living witnesses of a world that no longer exists.

Look closely at us and you might see gray hair, slower steps, or the quiet patience that time teaches.

But if you truly listen to our story, you will realize something extraordinary. We are not simply older people moving through the final chapters of life. We are the survivors of a breathtaking transformation in human history, a generation that walked from the slow rhythm of an analog world into the dazzling speed of a digital one without losing our sense of humanity along the way.

Our journey began in a very different world. Many of us were born in the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, when the scars of World War II were still fresh and the world was trying to rebuild itself. Cities were rising again from rubble, families were learning how to hope after years of uncertainty, and childhood unfolded in ways that would feel almost unrecognizable to younger generations today.

Our toys were simple: We played marbles in dusty yards and hopscotch on cracked sidewalks. We gathered around kitchen tables to play checkers and cards while the smell of dinner filled the house. When the streetlights flickered on in the evening, it was the universal signal that childhood adventures were over for the day and it was time to go home.

There were no smart phones. No streaming videos. No endless scroll of digital distractions. Instead, we built our memories in the real world—with scraped knees, laughter echoing down neighborhood streets, and friendships that formed face to face.

Music became one of the defining soundtracks of our youth.

The 1960s and 1970s arrived like a wave of color and rebellion. We watched as culture shifted around us, carried by electric guitars and voices that dared to question the world. For many of us, gatherings like the legendary Woodstock Festival of 1969 symbolized something powerful: the belief that peace, music, and community could reshape the future.

Thousands of young people stood together in muddy fields, listening to artists who poured raw emotion into towering speakers known as the Wall of Sound. Those concerts were not just entertainment—they were moments when strangers felt like a single generation singing the same hope under an open sky.

Education looked different then too. Our notebooks were filled with handwritten notes carefully copied from chalkboards. Research required patience, libraries, and stacks of heavy books rather than a quick internet search. We learned to slow down and think through ideas because information did not arrive instantly.

Mistakes were corrected with erasers and ink. Not with the click of a “delete” button.

Love also carried a different rhythm. We fell in love while vinyl records spun on turntables and cassette tapes clicked softly inside plastic players. Music became the background to first dances, long conversations, and dreams about the future. Those relationships grew into marriages, families, and lives built step by step through the 1980s and 1990s, decades that saw technology begin to reshape the world around us.

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Yet nothing compares to the bridge our generation has crossed. We are the only generation to have experienced an entirely analog childhood and a fully digital adulthood. We remember waiting days—or sometimes weeks—for handwritten letters to arrive in the mail. We remember rotary telephones and party lines where neighbors could accidentally overhear conversations. Communication required patience and anticipation. Today, we can see the face of a loved one across the ocean instantly on a screen small enough to fit in a pocket. The world changed in ways few could have imagined.

We watched humanity land on the Moon in 1969, a moment when millions of people sat in living rooms staring at black-and-white televisions as Neil Armstrong took humanity’s first steps on another world. We saw the rise of personal computers, the birth of the internet, and eventually the arrival of smartphones that placed entire libraries of knowledge in our hands.

Machines that once filled entire rooms now exist on devices lighter than a paperback book. We moved from punch cards and mechanical tools to artificial intelligence and global networks connecting billions of people instantly. And through every shift, we adapted.

Our bodies carry the marks of the times we lived through as well. We grew up during fears of polio and tuberculosis, illnesses that once terrified entire communities before vaccines helped bring them under control. We witnessed the global challenges of pandemics and health crises across decades, including the recent silence and uncertainty of COVID-19, which reminded the world that resilience is still required in every generation.

Science itself transformed before our eyes. We saw the discovery of the structure of DNA, the decoding of the human genome, and the early steps into gene therapy and advanced medicine. Transportation evolved from simple bicycles and steam engines to hybrid vehicles and electric cars gliding almost silently through city streets. Few generations have witnessed such sweeping change.

Yet, despite everything that evolved around us, certain things remain unchanged: We still understand the joy of a cold glass bottle of lemonade on a hot afternoon. We still remember the taste of vegetables picked straight from a garden. We still know the value of a long conversation that unfolds slowly without a keyboard or screen interrupting it.

Our memories stretch across decades. We have celebrated births, mourned losses, watched friends depart, and carried their stories forward. Those who remain share something rare: the experience of standing at the crossroads of history, holding memories from a world that younger generations know only through photographs and

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stories.

But we are not relics. We are living bridges. Our perspective reminds the modern world that progress does not have to erase wisdom. The speed of technology does not have to replace patience, kindness, or reflection. We remember what life felt like before everything moved so fast—and that memory carries quiet lessons worth sharing. So when someone calls us “elderly,” we can smile, because we know we are “legendary”.

Because behind that word lies something extraordinary. We are the generation that crossed two centuries, witnessed eight decades of transformation, and walked from the age of handwritten letters to the era of artificial intelligence.

What a life we have lived. What a remarkable story we continue to carry. If you belong to this generation, take a moment today to look in the mirror and recognize something powerful. You are not simply growing older. You are living history.

You and I are part of a generation that will always remain one of a kind. And perhaps, in the quietest and most meaningful way, you are becoming legendary.

I thought I would lead off with a little authentic humor. But, the fact is I have some serious thoughts to share in this post.

While we have much going on in the world now, we have a bigger on-going change that is affecting us all every day all around us. Most of you know my concerns about unbridled AI, but this affects us all every single day in more ways than I can even cover in just one post: The changes we all notice every day in most every way: For one, PRICES are rising at a furious pace all around us. At the grocery store, on our utility bills, fuel costs, insurance bills and even internet services.

Not only are they changing, many are sneakingly hard to see casually. Here are a few I have noticed just in the past few days.

Bleach prices: What used to be a gallon of household bleach was the standard unit of measure. For years the price hardly changed. It is an everyday product most of us use but purchase relatively infrequently. This week a went to purchase a gallon. I thought the container looked a little smaller than usual so when I got home I checked it out. To my surprise the price had not only risen substantially but now the “gallon” contained just 2.53 QUARTS. Then I look at the last “gallon” I had purchased and discovered that IT only contained 3.78 quarts.. The size was not only reduced once but twice in just six months! That is a considerable price increase coming in two misleading ways.

At Walmart recently I purchased an over the counter medicine that has always contained 100 capsules but when I purchased it recently it had increased in price by 20%. It was in the same size container I had purchased in the past but now contained 72 capsules. The price had risen by 20% but the product had been reduced by 23%! Combined the total price rose by about 40% in a month!!!

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In addition as a former employee of Walmart the Associates were told to re-price items that were in stock before the tariffs were imposed by cutting off the old tags and upping the price (for example on shoes) by $3-$5 per pair. We all knew what was going on but would have lost our jobs if we hadn’t complied with the orders. A few customers noticed but only a few complained.

Now, recently I discovered that my favorite tuna fish, size and can unchanged, went up in price but now contains 9 oz of tuna out of a total weight of 12 oz. More filler, less tuna. A disgrace!

Next, my preferred cat food now is 78% water and first on the list of ingredients before salmon and followed poultry by-products, a slaughter house waste.

A few months ago it was 70 cents per can at the store and today it is 95 cents per can. The size used to be 8 oz, then 7 oz and now 5.5 oz!! The can size is exactly the same!

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My final grocery award of the day goes to Clover Valley 28oz can of crushed tomatoes. Size hasn’t changed but now the number one ingredient is, You Guessed It: water.

Well, my last illustration for the day comes from direct mail. I received an offer for a unsecured loan of $10,000.00 from a company suggested by Walmart, that on the cover said “borrow up to $75,000.00 at an interest rate “starting at 6.2%”. As I turned to the third page I read the fine print. Loans of over $2601.00 or more cost an average of 18.60% annually but with a 7.8% origination fee of $782.00 which was deducted first off before you received the proceeds of the loan!

These are the works of the billionaire class that are using these tools to mislead American Citizens in our country with NO anti-trust laws being enforced and enabled by our generous recent changes to the tax code.

The final mention here is that in 2003 billionaires invested 0.3% of all funds in political races. Today’s New York times stated they contributed almost 20% of political donations in the 2024 races. Any ideas of the work we citizens must do to change this?

Sorry for this bit of eye-opening news, but I assure you I will have more information coming up. Please join this conversation by adding your comments and if this information has been valuable to you please share it and/or by supporting me by becoming a member for as little as $8 dollars a month. Thanks for reading! I hope this has been enlightening. If you are already a supporting member I really appreciate you.

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Herman Beck-Chenoweth

Margaret Anne Cargill was born into one of America’s richest families in 1920. Her great-grandfather’s grain company had become Cargill Incorporated—a corporation pulling in over $100 billion annually.

The Cargill family had fourteen billionaires. More than any other family in America. Margaret was one of eight heirs. She could have lived in penthouses, collected Ferraris, hosted galas where people wore her name on their chests. She had $1.8 billion and one obsession: making sure nobody ever found out.

She bought pottery wheels instead. While her cousins sat in boardrooms, Margaret sat in art studios. She didn’t care about quarterly earnings. She cared about the way Native American weavers created patterns that told thousand-year-old stories. She took her time with everything. Finished college at 34. Moved to Southern California and split her days between three simple places: a beach house, a mountain cabin, and trips to the desert.

Well into her seventies, Margaret loaded camping gear into her RV and disappeared into pine forests with friends. She drove herself everywhere in an old Jeep that had seen better decades.

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In 1993, a financial advisor flew out to meet her. She called his hotel.

“I’ll pick you up in thirty minutes. Be outside.” He stood on the curb expecting a town car. A woman in her seventies pulled up in a beat-up Jeep and shouted, “Get in!”

Years later, he’d say: “Money wasn’t important to her. She wasn’t buying diamonds. She was buying artwork made by a Hopi woman who’d spent months weaving it by hand.” But Margaret had billions. And a plan. Around 1990, she started erasing herself from her own generosity.

She mailed anonymous cashier’s checks to the Red Cross. Created fake foundation names. Walked into organizations calling herself “just Margaret” and left before anyone could ask her last name. Over fifteen years, she gave away more than $200 million. The Nature Conservancy. The Smithsonian. Animal shelters. Music schools. Elder care centers.

Nobody knew where the money came from. Bishop John Chane was struggling to keep his San Diego cathedral’s doors open when a stranger walked in. No appointment. No warning. “I understand you’re having budget problems,” she said. “I want to help.”

She handed him a cashier’s check. He figured maybe fifty dollars from a kind parishioner. “Who should I thank?” “Just say an angel stopped by.” After she left, he opened it. $50,000. She kept coming back. It took the bishop ten years to learn her name.

It was the same pattern everywhere. When the San Diego Humane Society needed $1.57 million to finish their building, their mystery donor asked one question: “How much do you need?” “You’ll have your check next week.” But here’s what made Margaret different.

She showed up to see what her money created. When the National Museum of the American Indian opened in Washington D.C., Margaret stood in the crowd. She wandered through exhibits watching families discover Native American art for the first time. Thrilled she’d helped build this place. Nobody knew the woman in comfortable shoes had donated millions to make it real.

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At building dedications she’d funded, Margaret slipped in the back. She watched speeches thanking anonymous donors. Saw joy on people’s faces experiencing something her money created. Then she disappeared. “She was absolutely thrilled to be incognito at events basically honoring her,” one charity director remembered.

Margaret died August 1, 2006. She was 85. That’s when the world learned her name. She never married. No children. Just art and friends and camping trips and quiet giving. She left everything to charity. Every share of Cargill stock she owned. But you can’t sell billions in a private company overnight. Lawyers and family spent five years untangling it.

Finally, 2011. Margaret’s 17.5% stake in Cargill: over $6 billion.

When the Chronicle of Philanthropy released America’s biggest donors in 2012, a woman who’d been dead six years topped the list. Margaret Cargill had given more than anyone else in America that year.

Today, Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies holds over $9 billion. One of America’s ten largest charitable foundations. They’ve distributed more than $3 billion since her death. The Red Cross still gets Margaret’s money. The Nature Conservancy. The Smithsonian. Animal shelters. Music programs.

All the causes she loved will be funded forever. The woman who drove a Jeep and slept in an RV built a giving machine that will save lives for generations.

Margaret never wanted buildings named after her. No awards. No thank-you dinners. She wanted to sit in the back row at a museum opening. Watch kids discover art for the first time. Know she made it possible. And she wanted nobody else to know.

She wanted to be an angel. For 85 years, that’s exactly what she was.

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I think this time of year we are all a little tired of Winter, so I have chosen to publish this humorous tale by Josh Young from Long Creek Herbs in Blue Eye Missouri to lighten things up a bit. This is an excerpt from his new book Life’s Funny Kid, and is a little longer than my usual post. If it’s over the top let me know in Comments. Josh is an Ozarks award winning author and if you like it as much as I do, send him a complement in the Comments. At the end of the article you will find a link to purchase his autographed book. Enjoy!

Here’s a glimpse of springtime in the herb garden, to remind everyone demoralized by winter and the news cycle, “This, too, shall pass.” This story is a mood piece, not quite laugh out loud funny, but meant to give my readers a sense of why I love life here on the farm. Although I worked very fulfilling professional jobs for more than half of the last 40 years, as revealed in my book, the comforts of building a home-based business simultaneously gave me enormous pleasure and relieved any stress. Therefore, I called this story “A Striker’s Manual for the Self-Employed Farmer”

One of the advantages of being self-employed in a home-based business on an herb farm is my ability to structure my time to suit myself. Here, I am not the slave of some impersonal time clock or imperious supervisor. Because I am an early morning person, I am often up and working on the computer before dawn. Likewise, there are some outdoor jobs I prefer to postpone until after suppertime, when the heat of the day abates. Fortunately, I have no boss (other than my conscience) to tell me, “Do it NOW!”

One summer Saturday proved to be just such a workday, when after lunchtime I decided to procrastinate by fixing the latch on the storm door going into the kitchen. The darn thing had been catching for weeks, refusing to open to anything but a concerted tug at the most inopportune times (like when I was trying to carry nine eggs from the barn without a basket). Then the next time I’d come to it, I might remember it was sticking, and therefore give the door a mighty yank, only to meet with no resistance, and nearly jerk the whole thing off its hinges.

So, being Master of my own Destiny and self-employed, I said to myself, “Josh, nothing you have to do today is as important as fixing this door.” (One of the disadvantages of being self-employed in a home-based business is that I tend to give myself orders. Sometimes, if I am in a grouchy mood, I even cuss myself back.)

But that day I was in total agreement with me and myself, so I went and got the screwdriver and attacked the latch. The balky part was the striker, which attaches to the doorjamb. On my door I have the kind of striker which is a little bar raised into place by a couple of springs. I never got to fully analyze the problem, however, because as I was removing the striker it spontaneously flew apart. When I retrieved the components, I was missing one of the two little springs.

I considered all my options, none of which seemed very good. I could drive twenty-six miles to a store, which might have a new storm door handle and latch, which might fit my door. I could hunt all day for whatever I had done with the parts to another storm door which I had replaced, and hope that it was the kind that had the same little striker with springs. I could find a pen with a little spring in it and try to bend it to look like the one door spring I still had. Or I could take a nap.

This being a deep dilemma, I decided to take a nap in my favorite summer napping place. I dumped the loose parts on the kitchen table with my tools, loudly telling the electric screwdriver to activate and procreate unassisted. I would contribute to the swear box later. I slammed the door going out, but it just bounced back and banged at me, like three snide slow claps as I retreated in disgust.

All was forgotten and forgiven, however, by the time I reached the porch of the guest cabin overlooking the garden. I find it utterly impossible to hold onto a grudge there. The air was hot but pleasant after a little thunderstorm blew through the night before. The distinct aromas of rosemary, roses, and cilantro in the rain-drenched garden were intoxicating. I stretched out on the thick cushions of the old iron glider, letting its gentle swaying motions rock me toward sleep.

I was almost asleep before it stopped moving, but Molly, our Jack Russell terrier, decided to jump up and comfort me by sleeping at my feet. Her jump up triggered another series of gentle rocking motions in the glider which felt so good, combined with the soft breezes on my face, I didn’t remind Molly she was not allowed on the glider. We raced each other to sleep, but I don’t know which of us won.

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I awoke sometime later from a dream in which children on a beach were tapping little white stones together in some curious game. But as my mind cleared, I realized it was only the male cardinal scolding the cat that she had come too close to where his nest was hidden in the grape arbor. A hummingbird buzzed in to take a drink of nectar from the feeder nearby. Merely watching his wings for just a few moments through half opened eyes was enough to send me back into a second hypnotic summer slumber.

Six guinea hens shouted at each other while on patrol around the yard, but their strange chatter calls have become so familiar to me, they scarcely penetrated my consciousness. Likewise, the rooster’s crowing and his hen’s bragging over eggs merely worked themselves into my dreams.

When I awoke the second time, without moving my head I could watch a pair of tree swallows follow a barn swallow on repeated strafing runs through the barnyard, snatching up flies. They would rise up over the telephone wires with just a few beats of their wings, and then each tuck, dive, and swoop along the ground, chittering to each other the entire time. When they had seemingly eaten their fill, the two tree swallows made one more run, this time capturing a big goose down feather. The one that caught it first took it high up in the air and then released it for the other to catch. That bird did a quick loop with the feather in its beak and then dropped it for its mate to chase. They played with the white bit of fluff in midair for over a minute that I could see and then disappeared from view behind the barn roof. Off in the far distant sky across the lake I could see two eagles gently circling upward in an invisible thermal.

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I roused myself, nudged Molly off the glider and went back to my fix-it job with a greatly improved disposition. As if to reward me for my attitude adjustment, when I opened the kitchen door my eyes fell upon a tiny, shiny object across the room on the floor. There, as if placed by magic in a small patch of sunlight, lay the second little spring I needed. I fixed the door in a couple of minutes and got back to real work.

Some fringe benefits are impossible to list in a contract for the self-employed.

©2025 by Josh Young

To purchase Josh's Book Click Here

I hope you enjoyed Josh’s story. I will be back soon with some concrete ways to battle every day and keep your life private.

Herman Beck-Chenoweth

Food, goods, land, houses, vehicles, fuel, electricity, propane

Even homeless people pay taxes.

Have you ever thought about where our taxes go and what we pay taxes on?

Do our property taxes go toward housing the homeless? No

Do the taxes we pay for groceries go toward feeding the hungry and community gardens? No

Do the taxes we pay on our vehicles go toward public transportation? No

How about the taxes we pay when renewing tags and driver’s license? Not generally

Taxes on all non-food items.

Taxes on services such as auto repairs

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Taxes on second-hand things at thrift stores etc, that taxes have already been paid on!

Taxes on gasoline

Taxes on electric power

Taxes on internet services

Taxes on phones and phone service

Taxes on doctor visits: Medication, Dental care, Eye care

Taxes on Veterinary care

City tax

Township tax

County tax

State tax

Federal tax

Taxes on your birth

Taxes on your death

ONE FINAL NOTE:

In the US, an estimated 38 million people live below the poverty line.

We have a Federal Minimum Wage. In the United States, the minimum wage is set by U.S. labor law and a range of state and local laws. In 1938, the Fair Labor Standards Act established it at 25¢ an hour (equivalent $5.72 in 2025 dollars). In 2009, Congress increased it to $7.50 per hour with the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007. Therefore it has been nineteen years since the minimum wage has been updated.

A $15.00 MISSOURI MINIMUM WAGE is in effect for 2026

Employers engaged in retail or service businesses whose annual gross income is less than $500,000 are not required to pay the state minimum wage rate. Therefore the rate for these employees is $7.50 per hour!

Employers are required to pay tipped employees at least 50 percent of the minimum wage, $7.50 per hour, plus any amount necessary to bring the employee’s total compensation to a minimum of $15.00 per hour.

This is a pretty bad situation which I will deal with further in a future post. In the meantime my next post will deal interacting with AI on an every day basis. Thanks for reading. If you would like to, please leave a comment, and share this to as it

is a post for everyone. My thanks to Jewel Cat Feather who brought this to my attention.

Herman Beck-Chenoweth

Sorry for the error. It was my first time to share links. Hope you have a great day!

Herm

Eighty percent of these end up in landfills every year. The annual sales growth of alkaline batteries is 5.3% each year. I hope I am preaching to the choir on this subject. If you have already made the change to re-chargeables I sincerely thank you for your good deeds.

If you haven’t here are some statistics for you to ponder:

Rechargeable batteries offer high power density, high discharge rate, good low-temperature performance, are energy-efficient, and lower cost overall, unlike non-rechargeable batteries. The growth of lithium-ion battery adoption is the perfect example of the increasing preference for rechargeable batteries. Rechargeable batteries are more efficient and reliable; the consumer prefers rechargeable batteries to alkaline batteries, which are primarily non-rechargeable.

Source: https://www.fortunebusinessinsights.com/alkaline-battery-market-103298

I recently made a survey to find out how long it takes re-chargeables to make a payback. The startling fact is on average your rechargeable battery will pay for itself after you would have purchased three (3!) Alkaline batteries of the same size. I shopped Amazon, Walmart and Family Dollar and found this out:

Alkaline AA Lowest cost Walmart: 69 cents each (12 pack)

Alkaline Duracell Amazon: 89 cents each (16 pack)

AA Rechargeable Amazon: $1.12 each (8 pack)

8 AA re-chargeables

Charger with 4 AA batteries: $12.65

https://amzn.to/4qNQ4cw

It does not take a wizard to see the difference here. It costs 29 cents more to buy a battery that can be recharged 500 times than it does to buy one alkaline battery. The last one above gives you a charger and four batteries for only $12.65. I do want to say if you follow the links to Amazon I receive a 4% commission. But hey, I did about 6 hours research to come up with this story.

One last point: Rechargeable NI-MH batteries come in all sizes. So, if you spend a little more you can get a universal charger that will charge anything from AAA, AA, C, D quickly, I recommend purchasing 2 twice the number of batteries you need so that one set can be used immediately while other set charges. Recharging can take 2-4 hours per set of four AA or AAA. Here is a good charger for that job:

Universal Adapter

$24.99

Batteries for illustration only, not included. If you don’t have a computer you will need a wall adapter to power the charger: 120 volt adapter $5.97

I really want to know if you would like more articles like this with links to my sources. I also would like to know if you are presently using re-chargeables and how they are working out for you. If you have any new subjects you would like me to explore, please ask in the comments as well.

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I really appreciate you stopping by whether are a paid or free subscriber. If you can afford it I would appreciate your paid membership as this is now my full-time job.

Herman Beck-Chenoweth